Planning on buying a new e-book from the Amazon Kindle store? Well, you might want to know that your next favorite book might be written by an AI. According to a new report from Reuters, more than 200 books on the Amazon Kindle store are authored or co-authored by ChatGPT.
Artificial intelligence does a lot of stuff, and ChatGPT is a grand showcase of that fact. It’s an extremely powerful AI chatbot that crosses a lot of technological (and ethical) borders. It definitely skirts the line between what AI can do and what it should do.
In any case, ChatGPT has the ability to create developed stories. For an example, we crafted a short story about a young boy who gets what he deserves using the chatbot. It summed up a short story in a couple of paragraphs. However, if you so wanted ChatGPT to write a full novel, you can.
More than 200 books on the Amazon Kindle store use ChatGPT
If you give people an inch, they take a mile. In this case, if you give people a powerful AI chatbot, they’ll write books. The Amazon Kindle store is a great spot for authors to self-publish. It’s been the source of income for many talented authors, but there’s an issue that’s currently rising.
There has been an explosion of books being posted to the platform that have either been co-authored or fully written by ChatGPT. That will make any author’s blood boil. But it’s true. As you can imagine, typing in a prompt and letting ChatGPT do its thing can get you a book. Sure, it takes time, but it’s much faster than typing out a full book (you know, like a real author).
This is a big issue
What makes this a major issue is that these so-called authors are not disclosing that they’re using AI. This means that anyone could realistically spit out a book and claim to be the brainchild behind it. That’s a massive smack to the face of all of the authors who spend months writing their books.
Not only that, but the platform runs the risk of being flooded with poorly-written books. Not only will people generate books using AI, which can’t add any sort of feeling or emotion to the books, but the thought of easy money will prompt many more people to generate books. This will cause a ton of books to flood the platform en masse.
There are already TikToks and YouTube videos on how to make full books in a matter of hours. That’s only adding fuel to the fire. Some of these books include self-help books and get-rich-quick schemes along with narratives.
As you can imagine, a lot of pressure is going to fall upon Amazon to do something about it. To the company’s credit, this issue is still pretty new, so it’s understandable that there isn’t a protocol just yet. Let’s hope that the company will be able to do something about it.
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